Parents are faced with the problem of teaching their baby to sleep through the night. This can be particularly problematic when the baby sleeps in a separate room from the parents. Separation from the parents is a new experience for the baby and can be traumatic. As a result, the baby may be unable to sleep or may sleep sporadically, waking-up and crying several times throughout the night. Typically, a parent will come to comfort the baby until the baby falls back asleep. Then the parent will return to his or her bedroom and return to sleep, sometimes being woken-up again a short time later by the baby.
Child development experts, such as Dr. Richard Ferber, advocate an approach to child rearing that attempts to let the baby “cry itself to sleep.” In particular, when the baby wakes-up and begins to cry, the parents do not immediately respond by coming to comfort the baby. It is thought that by allowing the baby to cry for a certain amount of time, the baby will gradually learn to master the anxiety of being alone. Initially, the baby may be left alone for a short time. As the baby begins to gain a greater level of comfort with being alone, progressively longer time intervals may become appropriate. This approach to child rearing has become known as the Ferber Method.
Parents seeking to use the Ferber Method may employ the use of a baby monitor. Monitors such as these include a unit maintained in the room with the baby and a unit kept with the parents. The baby unit allows crying or other sounds made by the baby to be picked-up and transmitted to the parent unit. The parent unit receives the transmission from the baby unit allowing the baby sounds to be substantially reproduced in proximity to the parents. Remote monitoring allows a parent and child to sleep in separate rooms. When used in connection with the Ferber Method, the parent unit is turned off or otherwise disabled for a certain amount of time during which the baby is allowed to cry without receiving attention.
Attempting to implement the Ferber Method using prior art baby monitors inevitably leads to problems. In particular, the parents may fall back asleep when the parent unit is disabled. With the parents sleeping and no longer in contact with the baby, the baby may be left to cry for a much longer time than is desirable. A solution to this problem is to disable the baby monitor and to set an alarm clock. If the parents then fall back asleep, they can be assured that they will be woken-up at a predetermined time and the baby will not be left alone for too long. However, this method suffers from the drawback that if the baby does in fact “cry itself to sleep” the parents are still woken-up when the alarm goes off. The parents then lose valuable sleep by having to disable the alarm, possibly having to reset the alarm to a normal waking time, and then having to fall back asleep.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a baby monitor with a parent unit that is capable of being muted for a predetermined time after which the parent unit functions normally. Additionally, it would be desirable for the predetermined time in which the baby monitor is muted to be adjustable.